Thursday, April 25, 2013

A boomlet of Bush popularity -- April 25, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Americans are notoriously fickle. Three separate times while
he was president, George W. Bush’s approval rating plummeted to 25 percent. This,
of course, was the same president whose approval rating soared to 90 percent
after the 9/11 attacks.

As Bush’s helicopter lifted off the U.S. Capitol grounds for
his return to Texas after Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration in January
2009, the jubilant crowd sang-sneered: “Nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, goodbye!” At
that point, only about one in three Americans
approved of his performance as president.

Bush claims he never worries about polls or the judgment of
history. When journalist Bob Woodward asked him in 2003 how history would judge
the Iraq war, Bush declined to take the bait. “History. We don’t know. We’ll
all be dead,” he said.

As they often do with polarizing politicians, people have mellowed
toward Bush. Nearly half of adults now approve of the way he handled his job as
president. While about three in four Democrats still disapprove, that’s down from
the nine in 10 Democrats who disapproved in 2008 of the way he did his job.

Bush’s approval rating overall equals Obama’s, the latest
Washington Post-ABC News poll reported Tuesday. Such are the power of silence and absence.

In our ego-driven world, the idea of someone stepping off
the national stage more or less voluntarily has definite appeal. Even his critics
admired the way Bush picked up his paint brushes and went about his new life in
Dallas, refusing to be drawn into the political fray.

He didn’t respond when Barack Obama and other Democrats blamed
him for the mess he left. He skipped the 2008 Republican National Convention to
stay in Washington after Hurricane Gustav, showing he did learn something from the
disastrously slow response to Katrina. He declined an invitation to join Obama
at Ground Zero after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Bush also stayed away from
the Republican National Convention last year.

The 43rd president, in interviews surrounding the
dedication Thursday of his presidential library, began to give his side of his eight
White House years. For example, he vigorously defended the Medicare
prescription drug benefit he expanded, despite Republican criticism that it was
too big and costly.

“We were modernizing an antiquated system” already in place,
he told the Dallas Morning News.

He regrets being unable to get an immigration bill through
Congress, and he called for a “benevolent spirit” in the debate.

His brand of “compassionate conservatism” may yet get a
second look from his party. After losing the popular vote in five of the last
six presidential elections, the Republican National Committee finally conceded
that the perception that the GOP doesn’t care hurts Republican candidates.
Imagine that.

It’s worth remembering how Bush cast his compassionate conservatism.
“Big government is not the answer. But the alternative to bureaucracy is not
indifference,” he said in 2000. “We will give low-income Americans tax credits
to buy the private health insurance they need and deserve,” he said.

Democrats typically denounced Bush’s compassion as phony, and
conservatives saw his conservatism as squishy. Interestingly, tax credits are
what the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – will give low-income people in
January to buy health insurance through exchanges.

House Republicans have voted repeatedly to repeal Obamacare.
This week House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., tried a different approach.
The felicitously titled “Helping Sick Americans Now Act” would redirect $300
million from the health law’s Prevention and Public Health Fund to a temporary health
insurance fund for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

The idea was to show that while they hate Obamacare, Republicans
do care about the sick. Not so fast.

Democrats opposed the measure for draining the public health
fund, and the White House threatened a veto. But it was the ire of GOP
conservatives that forced Cantor to pull the bill before a floor vote. Tea
party Republicans and other conservatives refused to vote for anything short of
repealing Obamacare.

Cantor says he isn’t giving up. Can he win the compassion
argument among Republicans that Bush could not? Stay tuned.